Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Trip to the Bay Area

I came to the Bay Area to attend a content strategy seminar sponsored by eBay in the old Novell building in San Jose. I got an afternoon free the day I arrived, so I drove down the coast from Half Moon Bay to Carmel. I also had work when I got back to the hotel in the evening, so all's fair.

I think this is the first time I've rented from Avis. My first choice, Hertz, is not on the company's approved list. The Avis lady offered this Mini Cooper at no additional cost. With the afternoon free, I was thinking of driving to the beach, and this looked like fun, so why not? The Pigeon Point Lighthouse is in the background, on Highway 1 between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. This is the tallest lighthouse on the West Coast. It was for sale when we lived in California, but the California State Parks has thankfully taken it over, and the grounds are open to the public. The lighthouse is not open until it is restored in the distant future. 



The real Pebble Beach. I think this is part of Bean Hollow State Beach. But it's called Pebble Beach.  



A closer view of the beautifully colored pebbles. 



If you've ever bought fresh strawberries in the Western U.S., chances are they came from Watsonville, California. 



And chances are these people picked them. 



Low tide. Surf plants take a beating. 



Okay, I'm going to break one of my rules on photography, and that is to post only one picture of a particular scene. But I was fascinated watching this seaweed getting clobbered in the low-tide surf. 



Last picture of this. 



Here I go again: Three pictures of San Francisco at night taken from the Marin Headlands. My favorite spot for viewing the city. The Bay Bridge is on the left of San Francisco, going to Treasure Island and Oakland. A section of this double-decker bridge collapsed in the 1989 earthquake, killing one woman.  


This is a composite picture that shows what I saw, with the full moon over the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco.  



This untouched picture shows what the camera saw. I'm not sure which picture I like better, so here they both are. 

2 comments:

Brian Austin said...

Did you steal any pebbles from the beach?

MAstle said...

I confess that my intentions may have been to borrow a few pebbles, but there were two busloads of school kids at the beach and I didn't want to set a bad example. Or get caught.